


September 1, 1969

by BeaArthurPendragon



Series: I'll Light Your Way Home [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blanket Permission, Blow Jobs, Body Worship, Bottom Bucky Barnes, First Meetings, Flirting, Fluff and Smut, Gay Bar, Hand Jobs, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Porn with Feelings, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers is New at This, Vietnam War, lots of feelings, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 11:28:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18590335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaArthurPendragon/pseuds/BeaArthurPendragon
Summary: Last year, Buck Barnes came home from Vietnam with a bad back and a prosthetic arm named Roz--and with nothing left to lose, he let the GI Bill take him to college as far away from his closeted life in Indiana as possible: New York City. When a gorgeous blond square looking lost as a lamb walks into the gay bar where he works on the weekends, he’s only thinking about tonight. He never expected to find himself wishing for a tomorrow, too.Lots of feelings with some porn.





	September 1, 1969

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by W.H. Auden’s poem, “[September 1, 1939](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/september-1-1939).” The first stanza is particularly apt:  
>   
>  _I sit in one of the dives_  
>  _On Fifty-second Street_  
>  _Uncertain and afraid_  
>  _As the clever hopes expire_  
>  _Of a low dishonest decade:_  
>  _Waves of anger and fear_  
>  _Circulate over the bright_  
>  _And darkened lands of the earth,_  
>  _Obsessing our private lives;_  
>  _The unmentionable odour of death_  
>  _Offends the September night._  
>   
>   And this bit, which may be more familiar:  
>   
>  _And no one exists alone;_  
>  _Hunger allows no choice_  
>  _To the citizen or the police;_  
>  _We must love one another or die._  
>   
>  I keep rewriting this damn thing, so I'm just posting it to make myself stop. Not beta'd, so, y'know, let me know if you find an unfinished sentence or something. 
> 
> Content warning: Period typical homophobia and some mild ableism.

Josie’s hides in plain sight on a seedy corner in Hell’s Kitchen—a dive favored by those who also hide in plain sight, sailors from the docks down the block and stagehands from the theaters nearby and folks from the neighborhood looking to get away from this overheated headache of a city to spend a few hours with some like-minded company.

Buck works there because Josie was the only one willing to hire him, doesn't mind the arm or the hook and trusts her customers won’t either. The arm’s name is Roz and she’s not good for much, but she can pull a beer tap and wipe down a table and hold a cigarette when he’s feeling dramatic, and if it bothers Josie that he needs her help to lift a keg, she’s never bitched to him about it.

It’s a good job for that reason and for others, because he’s of like mind, too.

He’s got Roz to thank for his being in New York in the first place. He’d grown up on a struggling pig farm in Indiana and always figured he’d take it over from his dad one day—but the draft finally caught up with him in ’66, just five months shy of his 24th birthday, and with no wife and no plan to get one, his fate was sealed. He spent nearly two years drowning in mud and shit and violence he never believed himself capable of until a grenade tore his left arm off so hard it shattered his collarbone, three ribs, and two vertebrae for good measure. The surgeon in Hawaii said it was a miracle he wasn’t paralyzed, then screwed a quarter pound of metal into his bones to make sure he stayed that way.

Realizing he’d gotten a second chance at a life he’d never allowed himself to want and a damn good excuse for walking away from the old one, he’d decided to let the GI Bill take him as far away from the farm as he could imagine: New York City. 

And now it’s 1969 and Buck’s the oldest sophomore at Empire State University, chasing a degree in comparative literature because books were the only things that kept him sane during the war. Most of the kids there don’t want to have anything to do with him, view him as a war criminal or a baby killer, and more than a few are happy to tell him so to his face. He doesn’t disagree, but he doesn’t bother telling them because it costs nothing to oppose a war that your daddy bought your way out of. They haven’t earned the right to be right.  

So instead of living in the residence halls with the brats, he’s got a tiny fifth-floor walkup on the Upper West Side with indifferent heat and earns his pocket money at Josie’s on the weekends. Most nights he goes home alone, but not always, and that’s something he couldn’t do in Indiana, either. 

Tonight might be one of those nights, he thinks, eyeing the blond Adonis that just wandered in with arms as big as Buck’s thighs and an ass that puts Paul Newman to shame. He can’t be that much older than Buck, but he’s dressed like Buck’s dad, hair shorn high and tight, a short-sleeve oxford tucked and belted into a pair of khakis, somehow still crisp in the smoldering late-summer heat. Upright, uptight—former military for sure—he’s got the spooked-deer look of a man who isn’t sure he’s ready to find what he’s come looking for.

Buck catches his eye and nods encouragingly, and a fleeting grateful smile ghosts across Adonis’ face before he governs himself again and remembers to be tough. But he doesn’t come to the bar right away. Instead he crosses over to the jukebox and drops a couple of dimes in, and this is the test, because if he chooses the Beatles, he’s dead to Buck no matter how pretty he is.

He chooses Johnny Cash.

Adonis leans over the jukebox contemplatively while the record drops and the song begins, and Buck’s worked here long enough to recognize a man who’s trying to make a decision he can’t back down from.

The sun’s down but it’s still early, still hot enough that only their most dedicated regulars are in tonight. Josie’s sweating her tits off in a tank top and suspenders and even Buck’s down to a single t-shirt, Roz’s harness sticky against his bare skin because he can’t bear to wear an undershirt in this heat. Short sleeves also mean Roz herself is on full display, from socket to hook, the sticker reading _Property of U.S. Government_ he’d slapped onto her at a Vets for Peace rally still refusing to come off more than a month later. It’ll mean fielding more questions about her than usual, but he’d rather deal with those than die of heat stroke.

Buck cards his fingers through his hair—almost past his chin now—and quickly smooths it down before Adonis looks at him again. Josie flicks his good arm with a dishrag to get his attention and flutters her eyelashes at him teasingly and he sighs. Like any good bartender, Buck’s a good flirt, but it’s been a long time since he’s gotten laid. Too long.

Adonis decides whatever he’s going to decide and walks up to the bar, concentrating hard on opening a pack of cigarettes and shaking one loose so he doesn’t have to meet Buck or anyone else’s eye right away.

Buck feels for the guy, he does, but he also really wants to get into his pants, so he leans across the bar and offers him a light and hopes the attention doesn’t make him faint. It doesn’t: Adonis takes the light graciously and their eyes meet over the flame—blue as sea glass, Buck thinks—and then he takes a drag and finally relaxes enough to smile in thanks.

“What’ll you have?” Buck asks.

“Whatever’s coldest,” Adonis says. His voice is rich and mellow and unexpectedly gentle, considering the man could probably crush his chest with a single punch.

“Sorry, we’re all out of strawberry malteds,” Buck teases.

Adonis chuckles. “Beer’s fine.”

Adonis watches him as Buck pours the pint—not just Roz, which most people pay attention to, but all of him—and Buck preens a little. He’s kept fit since he got home, swimming at least an hour most evenings at the campus pool, when it’s nice and empty and the water seems to muffle the noise of his mind. It’s supposed to be good for his back but the real reason he does it is because the exhaustion of a one-armed mile helps him sleep better than any pill. He still doesn’t sleep so great, but his vanity doesn’t mind the results. Neither does Adonis, apparently.  

“Spare one?” Buck asks as he hands over the drink, nodding at the pack of cigarettes.

Adonis passes him the pack. Buck helps himself and then, even though he has a lighter, he plucks Adonis’ cigarette from his hand to light his own with the cherry.

“First time here?” Buck asks, handing the stranger’s cigarette back to him.

Adonis winces, then takes another drag. “That obvious?”

“Not at all,” Buck lies generously. “I only work here part-time. Name’s Buck.”

“Steve,” the man says. “Nice to meet you.” He takes a sip of beer and nods toward Buck. “I gotta ask—is Buck your real name?”

“Nickname. Middle name’s Buchanan. My given name’s Jim Barnes, but some idiot at HQ decided to put me, Jamie Bourn, and Jimmy Burns all into the same unit in Nam.” Buck finds himself smiling a little, not because it was funny but because it feels good to say their names out loud again, to tell someone about them after all this time. “We kept getting mixed up on the radio, so my LT started using our middle names instead—Davy, Murph, and Buck.” He shrugs, and the gesture makes Roz’s hooks open and close poetically in response. “Guess by the time I got home, I didn’t feel much like Jim anymore, so I kept it.”

Steve nods toward Roz, looking right at the sticker. “That how you come by the hardware?”

Buck glances down to follow his gaze. “Grenade. Near Hue.”

“Hue, huh?” Steve whistles and shakes his head. “Army or Marines?”

“Army. The 107th,” Buck says. He studies Steve with a critical eye. “What about you?”

Steve glances down at his beer. “Special forces.”

“You’d tell me what you did but then you’d have to kill me, right?”

Steve gives him a tight smile. “Something like that.”

“How long you been back in the world?”

“Four months.”

“Welcome home,” Buck says, reaching beneath the bar for a bottle of Jack. He pours two shots and, though he doesn’t usually use Roz to serve customers, he pushes one of the glasses across the bar with her. “On the house,” he says, knocking his glass against Steve’s.

“Hooah,” Steve says, and they drink.

It’s a hot slow night, and Josie’s in a generous mood, so she doesn’t mind that Buck spends most of the evening hanging out with Steve at the end of the bar, so long as he keeps everyone else’s glasses full and stays sober enough to mind the till.

He learns that Steve’s 33, grew up in Brooklyn and lives there still. Enlisted out of high school in ’54 but didn’t get to Korea till after the armistice, so he just sat on the DMZ for a couple of years, taking pot shots at the North and ducking pot shots from the other side. Rotated home for a spell, then went to Germany for four years, then came back for a year and a half before shipping out to Vietnam in ‘64. By the time his final hitch ended, he’d been in the Army for 15 years and had no stomach left to make it to 20, so he kissed his pension goodbye and came home.

Now he works for the Port Authority, guarding cargo at the Red Hook shipping terminal on the graveyard shift. It can get dull, he admits, but it sure beats getting shot at every day.

A second beer and another shot and Steve finally loosens up enough to flirt back. He’s charming as hell, Buck has to admit—gentlemanly in an old-fashioned way, but no prude, either. For all his initial nervousness, nothing about Josie’s actually seems to shock him—not the two gray-haired men slow-dancing to Connie Francis in the back, or the woman with a buzz cut with her hand tucked into her girlfriend’s back pocket as they study the selections on the jukebox, or the young sailor flirting with an elegantly dressed queen at the opposite end of the bar. It’s nothing like the orgiastic bacchanalia most people seem to picture in places like this, but he’d wager that Josie’s is as far from Kansas as Dorothy here’s ever been before.

They talk baseball and politics, and Buck’s relieved to learn they’ve got the same tastes in both: they offer a toast to the Mets, who just might win it all this year, and Bobby Kennedy, God rest his soul. For a guy who never went to college, Steve’s got a sophisticated understanding of current affairs, and Buck finds himself listening raptly as he discusses the nuances of nuclear proliferation and the Nixon Doctrine. And when that gets too heavy for a Saturday night, he asks Buck about the books he’s reading, and Buck seizes the opportunity to impress him by reciting a bit of Auden from memory. He glows a little when Steve applauds.

“Can I ask a personal question?” Buck asks.

“Sure.”

“Of all the gin joints in the world, what made you decide this was going to be the night you walked into this one?”

Steve gives a wry smile and then meets his eyes. “Figured if a man could be brave enough to walk on the moon, least I could do was walk into a bar.”

“Planning on walking out alone?” Buck asks softly. It’s too early to be this forward; barely 10 o’clock and he’s still got four hours left on his shift. But he _wants_ this man with an intensity that startles him.

Steve blushes a little and stalls for time by lighting another cigarette. “Haven’t decided yet,” he says finally.

Buck smiles. “Well. I get off at two,” he says, stepping away to refill another customer’s glass. “If you decide by then.”

It gets crowded a few minutes later; most of the theaters had let out an hour before, and the stagehands were starting to pour in to celebrate another show in the books, put off going back to their shitty apartments for a little while longer, or both.

Steve doesn’t mind that he’s too busy to talk now—he sticks around anyway. He doesn’t really talk to anyone else, just sits and drinks and smokes and watches Buck work.

Buck gives him a show, flipping bottles and pouring shots from above his head and flirting like a whore with his favorite regulars. Steve’s getting jealous, he can tell, but he’s loving it too, the way he leans back against the wall with a knowing half-smile on his face. When Buck leans over to accept a kiss on the cheek from a prop master who sucked his dick in the stockroom last New Year’s Eve, he glances over and meets Steve’s eye. He knows his night’s a foregone conclusion when Steve just grins, holds out his beer in a silent toast, and drinks.

And then finally it’s two o’clock and Josie’s washing dishes and wiping down tables while Buck closes out the last few tabs of the night.

Steve’s still there, offers to help put the chairs on the tables so Josie can mop up, and Josie lets him. Then she surprises them both by letting Buck leave before he’s done restocking the booze.

“You sure?” Buck asks.

“Get the fuck out of here before I change my mind,” Josie says amiably.

“You’re a doll,” Buck says, kissing her on the cheek. “I owe you.”

“I’ll dock it from your tips,” she says, swatting his ass. “Now go. Be young.”

Steve’s waiting for Buck by the door, finishing a cigarette and looking for all the world like he’s been doing this all his life.

“Ever ride a motorcycle?” he asks.

“No,” Buck says, though he’s pretty sure his answer wasn’t going to change whatever’s going to come next.

“How about we fix that?” he says, then flashes Buck a million-dollar smile that’s impossible to refuse. 

He follows Steve out to a Harley parked on the corner. Steve climbs on first, then pats the seat behind him. Buck clambers on carefully, cradling Roz against his chest so she doesn’t snag Steve's shirt, then rests her on his knee as he finds his balance. 

“Hold on to me,” Steve prompts, and Buck lets out a nervous little giggle as he slides his arm around Steve’s waist. The public intimacy of it is shocking and a little terrifying. He’s briefly glad that Roz is no help with this part, that she’s just going to stay where she is on his knee. At least one side of the view is safe. 

“Ready?” Steve asks, revving the engine. 

There’s no way he can hear Buck’s reply, so Buck just squeezes him tight, and tries not to whoop with excitement as they pull away from the curb and head toward the West Side Highway. The noise and the vibration of the bike reminds him a little too much of the choppers that ferried his squad in and out of the jungle, but Steve’s presence against him, warm and solid and reassuring, keeps him grounded in the here and now.

They hug the waterfront, rounding the tip of Manhattan before speeding across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Brooklyn Heights. They slow down as they enter the neighborhood—a surprisingly charming warren of mostly brownstones and row houses—and pull up in front of a newish six-story apartment building near the waterfront.

Steve eases himself off the bike first then offers his hand to Buck. The pins in his spine are starting to bitch about the long night on his feet and the awkward position he’d had to hold on the bike, so he accepts the hand gratefully, and God it’s strong—he can feel the muscles beneath the skin. Boxer’s hands, he thinks. They keep holding hands a fraction too long, until they remember they’re still on the street.

He follows Steve into the building and calls the elevator. He lives on the top floor, but when the elevator door opens, Steve leads him to a door at the end of the hall that opens onto a short stairwell to the roof. They emerge outside into a forest of laundry, and Steve leads him through the lines to a bench situated on the north side of the building, overlooking the East River and downtown Manhattan.

Steve gestures at the bench. “Want to sit for a while?”

Buck smiles at him in amused disbelief. How a man this courtly could still exist in the Year of our Lord 1969 seems like a miracle. “Sure,” he says, and Steve makes sure to stay on his right side when they do.

The moon’s just a sliver in the sky and it’s just barely dark enough to see stars. There’s a cool, almost chilly breeze coming in off the river that feels luxurious after the muggy suffocation of Manhattan and he shivers a little.

“Cold?”

He’s not, really, but he nods anyway because he knows Steve’s just looking for an excuse to put his arm around him. Steve does, and Buck can feel the moment he registers Roz’s harness under his shirt, a microsecond of hesitation before he keeps sliding his hand around Buck’s shoulder. His hand comes to rest only inches from the edge of Roz’s socket but he forces himself not to worry about that. He’s not afraid of being touched there, but this is the point where she starts to feel like a third wheel, and until he has a chance to ditch her, he’d rather make sure Steve’s attention was elsewhere.

So Buck leans into him a little and rests his hand on Steve’s knee, and that seems to distract him in a fun way. Steve’s breath starts to shallow a little, and Buck grins and lifts his hand to turn Steve’s face toward him.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Buck says, meeting his eyes.

Steve flushes a little. “Okay,” he says, his voice tripping adorably over the vowels.

Buck leans in and gives him a long, slow kiss—a gentle one, no tongue, no teeth—and feels Steve smile against his mouth when he’s done.

“You like that?” Buck asks, though it comes out more statement than question. Steve lets out a little laugh and then reaches up to cup the back of Buck’s head and kisses him back, not so gently. He bites Buck’s lower lip a little, then eases his teeth apart with his tongue.

Any notion Buck had of Steve’s inexperience vanishes; maybe this isn’t his first rodeo after all, or maybe he’s just left a trail of disappointed women in his wake.

 _More for me, then_ , Buck thinks, leaning hard into Steve’s kiss. The angle is bad, sitting side by side on the bench, but they manage. Steve’s hunger is turning him on in ways he didn’t think possible, and the next thing he knows, he’s got a fistful of Steve’s shirt crumpled up in his hand and he’s wondering whether it’s safe to unbutton it here.

Steve reads his mind. “Let’s go inside,” he says. His voice has dropped half an octave and his gaze has taken on a kind of lazy intensity that only means one thing. He stands and Buck takes his hand and follows him back into the stairwell down to Steve’s floor.

His apartment is the first door on the left, and they’re inside before Buck even has time to register that they’d been holding hands right there in the hallway.

Safely inside, Buck grabs Steve’s collar and pulls him into another kiss before going to work on his buttons. Steve reaches for Buck’s waist and slides his hands beneath his t-shirt, and Christ, the more of Steve’s carved-marble body he exposes the weaker his knees get. Meanwhile, Steve runs his hands up the small of Buck’s back and as Buck works his last button free, he plucks at the hem of Buck’s t-shirt.

“I want to feel you against me,” Steve murmurs. “Can I take this off?”

“Let me,” Buck says, because he’s got to protect Roz. He rucks up the t-shirt and works it over his right arm and head. There’s a trick he can do where he lets his shirt slide down Roz’s length and catches it with her hook, and Steve grins like a kid when he does it now.

“I’m going to take this off, too,” Buck tells him, touching Roz’s harness.

Steve’s eyes flick away and for a moment Buck’s afraid that’s too much reality for him, until he nods past him toward a small dining table a few feet away. “You can set it down there if you want.”

Buck nods and turns one of the chairs out so he can sit on it, resting Roz on his knee while he works the buckles of the straps across his chest and back loose. He bites his lip to hold back the little hiss of relief he wants to make when he eases his stump from the socket; he rests her on the table and rolls the thin cotton sock off next. Steve’s apartment is still warm from the day, but he sighs a little as the air hits his skin; it feels really fucking good to be free of her right now.

He stands carefully, recalibrating his balance now that he’s ten pounds lighter on his left side, and gives his stump an experimental stretch, unable to resist a little hum of pleasure as he does.

“Feel better?” Steve asks. He’s looking again, has been the whole time, but it still doesn’t feel like staring—maybe because it’s not just the stump he’s looking at, or the shrapnel scars spattered like confetti across his shoulder and chest, or the red welts Roz’s harness leaves on his skin on a hot day, but all of him, just as he had back at the bar.

But Buck doesn’t want to talk about Roz right now, just wants to put the interruption behind him and get back to what they were doing before. “Feels better to do this,” he says, reaching toward Steve and hooking his forefinger into the waistband of his impossibly square khakis, pulling him in for a kiss. Steve wraps his arms around Buck’s waist and then just—hugs him close for a few minutes, chest to chest. It’s unexpectedly sweet. He tucks his head against Steve’s shoulder and breathes in his soap-and-aftershave scent, a little old-fashioned but nice. Comforting in an odd way, like the rest of him.

He kisses the curve of Steve’s neck and Steve groans with pleasure, so he flicks the skin with his tongue and Steve slaps his ass in reply. Not hard, but not gentle, either, and the surprise of the impact is so delicious he gasps.

I won’t hurt you,” Steve murmurs, grabbing his ass and pressing his pelvis hard against Buck’s, swaying his hips a little in search of friction. They’re both half-hard already and if Steve’s still nervous, Buck can’t tell at all.

“That didn’t hurt,” Buck reassures him, brushing his lips along Steve’s collarbone before leaning over a little bit to catch his nipple gently between his teeth. He rouses it with his tongue, then bites a little—not hard, but not gentle, either—and grins at the sound of Steve’s strangled little sigh.

His finger’s still hooked on the waistband of Steve’s khakis, and he starts to work the buckle of his belt loose. Steve kisses his forehead as he does, with a melting tenderness that nearly makes Buck weep. This man has him all spun around in the best possible way, and it’s fucking glorious.

He gets the belt buckle loose and then thumbs the button of Steve’s khakis open next, drawing the zipper down enough so he can slide his hand into his shorts.

Steve’s breath hitches hard as Buck cups his hand around his cock. He’s big but manageable, and he adjusts his grip so he can stroke the base of it with his thumb. Steve puts his hands on Buck’s shoulders.

“My hand okay here?” he asks, lightly squeezing the left.

“Yeah,” Buck says, rolling his shoulder luxuriously beneath Steve’s touch. He’s got an old knot in the muscle beneath Steve’s fingers, and he sighs happily at the pressure. “Feels good.”

“Roger that,” he says, kissing Buck gently on the mouth, working at the knot a little more and giving Buck all kinds of ideas about what else he could do with those strong fingers of his. “What you’re doing feels good too.”

“I can tell,” Buck says encouragingly, running his thumb up Steve’s fully erect cock. “That’s not all I know how to do, you know.”

“You don’t say.”

Buck lets go long enough to loosen Steve’s zipper all the way and tug his khakis down before going to work on his boxers. Steve helps with this part and together they get him free. Buck walks him back against the kitchen doorjamb and kneels in front of him, licking a long, slow stripe up the length of his cock. He glances up at Steve’s face, and he’s looking at him in a kind of wide-eyed wonder that makes Buck feel like he’s just won the goddamn lottery.

He wraps his hand around the base of Steve’s cock and takes the rest of it into his mouth greedily—he’s been waiting all night for this—and begins to suck.

Steve whimpers a little when he does, and it’s amazing. He breathes in deep through his nose, getting drunk off the heady scent of Steve’s body as he works. Steve’s got one arm over his head, gripping the frame of the doorway, while the other hand is playing with Buck’s hair, and Christ, that feels good—he’s got a sensitive scalp and every touch sends a bolt of electricity all the way through him to his toes.

Steve’s starting to fall apart, hips twitching and breath blurring with voice, and Buck’s loving every second of it. He takes it slow, trying to make it last, but Steve’s too far gone now, his hips jerking uncontrollably, mumbling a glorious string of expletives that sound so fucking hot Buck can barely keep his own balance.

“I’m gonna come,” Steve gasps, but Buck wants to feel him come inside him, wants to taste him when he does, so he stays right where he is. Steve bursts forth with a sweet little cry and Buck braces against him as he floods Buck’s mouth with cum.

When he collapses back against the doorjamb, Buck swallows and eases himself off, rocking back on his heels before rising to kiss him. And Steve’s not shy about that—he kisses him back, even licking a missed spot from Buck’s lips. His eyelids are at half-mast and his pupils are blown black with pleasure, and he nuzzles Buck’s cheek and neck for a little while before leaning his head back and sighing.

“That was incredible,” he says.

“Thanks,” Buck says cockily, stepping in close and pressing his pelvis against Steve’s hip. His own dick’s half hard and ready for more, and he wants Steve to know it.

Steve cups his chin and kisses him, then threads his fingers through Buck’s. “Come with me,” he says, levering up from the wall and gathering the waistband of his khakis in his other hand so they don’t fall down.

Buck follows him through the little sitting room to Steve’s bedroom. Like the rest of the place, it’s spare—just a double bed, neatly made, a small chest of drawers in lieu of a night stand, a closet, a lamp, a chair. A simple cotton curtain flutters a little over an open window.

Steve stands him before the bed and takes a step back, just to admire him with a gentle half-smile on his face. It feels good to be admired. “Stay there,” Steve says softly, and Buck watches him undress—even now, he folds his pants before placing them on the chair. Buck finds his fastidiousness both cute and heartbreaking. No, he decides. Steve’s not all the way home yet.

Steve is built like a Greek statue. He’s taller than Buck, and bigger, and his skin is so smooth it seems impossible that he made it through six years of war without injury. It’s only when he turns his back for a moment to toss his socks on the chair that Buck sees the smooth livid scar winding up from his hip to the middle of his spine.

Steve catches him looking and reaches back to touch the scar. “Bullet graze,” he says simply. “Looks worse than it was.”

Buck doesn’t answer, because Steve reaches for him. He combs back a lock of Buck’s hair and caresses his cheek before turning his attention to the rest of his body. His touch is light, curious, sure. He doesn’t shy away from Buck’s injured shoulder but he doesn’t loiter there, either, because there’s so much more of him to discover.

Buck can barely breathe; the air’s gone thick with the weight of Steve’s reverence. His hands drift down Buck’s chest, and he pauses for a while to gently thumb his nipples, rousing them with small, deft circles before sliding down toward his belly. A chance touch to his navel triggers a small gasp, and Steve grins and leans in to trace its rim lightly with his tongue. Heat begins to flush through Buck’s body and it becomes harder to breathe as Steve undoes the fly of his jeans. He lets the jeans drop and slides his hands past the elastic of his boxers to cup his ass, exploring the sensitive little spot at the top of his cleft with his thumb, and Buck’s legs feel so unsteady with desire he grabs Steve’s shoulder to hold himself up.

“Hang in there, sweetheart,” Steve murmurs, gathering the waistband of Buck’s shorts and easing them down to meet his jeans pooling around his calves. He unties Buck’s shoes and helps him off with those, then offers a shoulder for Buck to lean on while he steps out of his those, too. Then he runs his hands back up Buck’s legs as he stands, his fingertips deliciously light against the backs of his knees.

Finally, he takes Buck’s dick in his hand and begins to massage it, reaching underneath with his other to play with his balls. He’s learned how to do this somewhere, Buck realizes, but that’s as far as rational thought goes for him right now because Christ, his hands feel good. He grips Steve’s shoulder harder and Steve looks up to meet his eyes with a smile. Buck manages to return it but he’s breathing hard now and leans in to press his forehead against Steve’s for more leverage as his hips begin to jerk.

“Need to lie down?” Steve murmurs and Buck nods. Steve guides him down to the bed and then eases in next to him. A jar of Vaseline appears and Steve warms a dab of it between his fingers before resuming his worship of Buck’s cock.

Steve props himself up with one hand and makes love to Buck with the other, kissing him and nibbling at his ear as he strokes. Buck groans and reaches up to grab the bedpost to keep himself from grabbing Steve’s hand to speed things along because the torture is so innocent and exquisite and he wants it to last all night.

Eventually, though, his breath gutters and he begins to thrash uncontrollably. “Fuck,” he gasps. “Oh, fuck, harder,” he demands, digging his heels into the mattress, and Steve complies.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Steve murmurs, kissing his temple and nosing at his hair, a strangely gentle contrast to the delicious ruin he’s making of Buck’s cock right now.

And finally Buck comes and it’s glorious. He shouts, he thinks, and heat floods through his body and the room fills with stars, and somewhere on the edge of his awareness is Steve, serene and happy, showering his forehead with tiny kisses.

Eventually he begins to return to Earth. Buck can’t remember coming like this before—he’s no virgin, but this was the first time he’d ever lost control like that. It was glorious. He’s in love. He barely knows this man, but he’s in love. There’s no other explanation for it.

After a while of boneless cuddling, they take turns cleaning up in Steve’s bathroom—a quick snoop inside his medicine cabinet reveals nothing interesting aside from a prescription for the same sleeping pills Buck has. Like Buck’s, his bottle is completely full.

When he returns to the bedroom, Steve’s sitting up in bed, smoking. He pats the spot next to him on the bed, and Buck climbs on, glad to have a little more time to spend with him. He accepts the cigarette Steve offers and draws his knee up to his chest, resting his arm across it.

“When you walked into the bar tonight I could have sworn you’d never been with a guy before,” he says. “But now I’m not so sure.”

“I got married in Germany,” Steve says carefully, and the words are a cold knife in Buck’s chest. He doesn’t want Steve’s wife in this bed any more than he wants Roz. “But on my last R&R in Bangkok, I—went somewhere that made me realize I couldn’t keep pretending to love her the way she deserved anymore,” Steve says. “I’m not proud of it,” he adds quickly. “Brothels are a sad business.”

“Everything about war’s a sad business,” Buck says. He’d done his R&R in Bangkok, too, finally agreeing to buy a blow job from a whore in Patpong to keep his buddies from suspecting anything, but once they’d gotten to her room, they’d just sat next to each other on the bed and drank shots of Mekhong until his time was up.

“We were supposed to be the good guys,” Steve says softly.

“You sure about that?” Buck asks, not unkindly, and stabs his cigarette out.

Steve takes a final drag off his and puts it out too. “Will you stay tonight?” he asks, in a voice so quiet Buck can barely hear him.

“Of course,” Buck says.

The night’s cooled off considerably, though there isn’t much left of it by now, and they climb under the covers together. Steve moves to gather Buck into his arms and Buck curls up into them. He’s only slept over with anyone once, and they’d literally just passed out next to each other; he’s never been held like this before.  

He’s never felt like this before, either—sated and happy, with a lover’s strong arms around him and his slow breath soft on his shoulder. For the first time in his life, he feels like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.

* * *

He sleeps more soundly than he has in months. Summers are bad for him, he’s learning—the heat and humidity, the fireworks and charcoal grills and gunfire all conspiring to yank him back to the war in surprising but painfully specific ways—but evidently Steve anchors him in sleep as much as he had on the bike.

He awakens slowly: He’s vaguely aware of the brightening sun, of a phone distantly ringing, of Steve heaving himself out of bed, but he doesn’t properly surface until he feels Steve’s hand on his arm.  

“Buck?” he murmurs softly. He’s already showered and halfway dressed in navy uniform trousers and his undershirt. “I really hate to kick you out, but I have to go into work. Someone called out sick and I’m the new guy, so I got the short straw.”

“Mmm,” Buck mumbles, trying to swallow his disappointment. A quick glance at Steve’s clock tells him that it’s barely a quarter past six. “I understand.”

Steve kisses him on the forehead. “Plenty of hot water left if you want a shower, though. I’m making coffee.”

It feels good to finally get the smoke and sweat of his shift at the bar off of him, and he abuses Steve’s water bill a little bit to let the hot stream pound on his creaky spine for a while longer. Afterward, he pads back into the living area in his jeans to retrieve his shirt and Roz. Steve watches him put her on without staring, curious but trying to be polite about it.  

“I don’t have to be in till eight,” Steve says, handing him a cup of coffee. “I should have just enough time to take you home first.”

“No, you don’t have do that,” Buck says, as much as he’d love the chance to hold the man for another hour. “It’s the opposite direction. I’ll take the train.”

“You need a token?”

Buck makes a sweetly exasperated face over his mug. “You don’t have to pay for my token.”

Steve laughs a little and then scrubs at the back of his head. “Well, how about I make us some breakfast, then?” he asks. “If you want to stay for a bit, I mean.”

Buck smiles. “Sure.”

He finishes getting dressed and Steve finishes cooking and they eat at the little table while trading sections of the newspaper like an old married couple. They talk about this and that, and it’s easy, like it was back at the bar. They’re both trying to make the meal last, Buck realizes, and something twists in his chest.

But eventually there’s no avoiding the empty plates and coffee cups. Buck helps Steve clear up, drying dishes with a rag clamped in Roz’s hook as Steve washes them.

“It’s a clever device,” Steve finally ventures, and then claps his mouth shut, as if he’s not sure if he’s made a mistake by acknowledging her.

“She comes in handy,” Buck says, snapping Roz’s hooks together a few times, hard enough to make them click. 

Steve flushes so deeply red he’s almost purple, and Buck feels bad. “That was a joke. You can laugh.”

He doesn’t, but he smiles, which is good enough. “She?”

Now it’s Buck’s turn to blush, because the story is so dumb he doesn’t want to tell it, but he’s a big boy who can own his mistakes, so he does. “The arm’s name is Roz.”

“Roz, huh?” Steve says, amused. “Why?”

Buck can feel himself positively glowing with embarrassment now. “When I first got her, the guy told me I needed to ease myself in nice and slow, like making love to the woman I loved. I wasn’t about to explain why that was a bad example, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Rosalind Russell, so.”

“As in _Auntie Mame_?”

“Exactly like _Auntie Mame_.”

Steve belly-laughs at that, and Buck can’t help but grin at his delight.

“You’re funny,” Steve says.

Buck doesn’t want to tell him that whatever part of his mind that was supposed to accept Roz as a natural extension of his body isn’t working, that no matter how skillfully he comes to use her, he’s pretty sure she’s always just going to be a tool to him. He’s always been ambivalent about relying on her—the farm boy in him doesn’t want to have to depend on anything to get by—but he wasn’t lying, either. She does come in handy.

“You can either laugh or cry, my friend,” Buck says instead.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Steve says. He takes Buck’s hand and kisses it, then sandwiches it between his own. It’s obvious neither one of them wants him to leave yet because they stay there for a while. “Hey, I want to show you something.”

Buck follows him across the apartment to a room he had assumed was a closet and gasps when Steve opens the door. It’s not much bigger than a closet, to be honest, but it’s got a window and enough room for a stool and an easel and a small table. There are several canvases leaning like dominoes beneath the table, and on the easel is one in progress.

“Holy shit,” Buck breathes.

The painting on the easel shows an old woman walking a small dog, sketched with paint. There’s no other way to describe it—her features seem haphazard and blurred but recognizable, as though seen through a cracked window sheeted with rain. The effect is compelling and weird and oddly beautiful.

“Little hobby of mine I picked up in Germany,” Steve says, almost embarrassed.

“How’d you learn how to do that?”

“Spent a lot of time visiting museums when I wasn’t on duty,” Steve says. He edges around the easel and starts bringing out other canvases to show him. “My wife—my ex-wife—bought me a painting kit for my birthday and I just copied as much as I could. Haven’t had a lot of time to practice in the last six years, but I don’t think I’ve forgotten too much.”

Buck studies the paintings Steve’s laid out before him. One’s a group of children playing on the sidewalk beneath the spray of an open fire hydrant, and another’s of the Brooklyn Bridge and downtown Manhattan. The rest are portraits—mostly people living in the building, Steve says—and the last depicts a man in unmistakable Army drab. This one’s more realistic, a little more detailed. Buck can tell the man seems to be laughing at something.

“Who’s that?” Buck asks.

“Buddy of mine from Korea. Real comedian—always kept us in stitches,” Steve says. “Got killed clearing land mines after I shipped home.”

There’s no doubt in Buck’s mind what he really meant to Steve, and he swallows back an unexpected bubble of grief. How the Army managed to turn this gentle, creative man into an elite killer, he would never understand.

They’re out of time. Buck offers to leave first—in the daylight, the Greek god and the one-armed hippie make a conspicuous couple on a Sunday morning—and Steve walks him to the door.

“Thank you for last night,” he says, almost shyly.

“The pleasure was all mine,” Buck says, pitching his voice playfully low. He leans in to kiss Steve goodbye and lingers there for a minute, tasting him one last time.

And then suddenly he decides he doesn’t want it to be the last time. He wants to feel Steve inside him, wants to feel his fingers and his tongue and his cock, wants to wrap his arm around Steve’s waist on his bike and sit next to him on his little rooftop bench overlooking the water and go to sleep in his arms at night. Fuck, he didn’t survive that grenade to live the rest of his life alone. He wants it all.

“I hope this isn’t the last I see of you,” Buck says, because that doesn’t sound too needy or clingy, but any cool he manages to project gets blown by the fact that he’s blushing like a goddamn schoolgirl.

Steve grins. “Guess I know where to find you, huh?”

“Guess you do.”

“Guess I might, then.”

Buck places his hand on the doorknob—he knows he really needs to leave now—but he looks back at Steve just before he turns it. “Soon,” he says, suddenly bold as brass. “Find me soon.”

And Steve smiles.

 

**Author's Note:**

> (Updated: Hey, this is now a series!)
> 
> Fills my MCU Kink Bingo square: "Body Worship"
> 
> Steve’s style is similar to [Elaine de Kooning’s](https://www.wikiart.org/en/elaine-de-kooning). 
> 
> I’m occasionally on [Tumblr](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/PendragonBea).


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